


gods of war

by frozen_sky



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Bottom Vergil (Devil May Cry), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-DMC5, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-24 16:20:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19727290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_sky/pseuds/frozen_sky
Summary: Dante and Vergil, after.A one-shot collection set after DMC5.





	1. apogee

**Author's Note:**

> what am i doing

_Clang_. 

Through the motions. One step; two. Dante whirls, strikes; Vergil parries, deflects with a sharp flick of his wrist. On and on, as endlessly and irrefutably well-matched as they have always been. 

Dante exhales. The joy in his heart is a simmering burn, pulses in time with every ring of steel and every moment Vergil meets his eyes. He didn’t think he would have this again: synchrony, equality, this—this unspoken, subtle attunement. Vergil, alive. Vergil, whole, _himself_ , regal and cold and ferocious, wreathed in blue flame.

Oh, how Dante has missed him.

“Slow,” says Vergil.

His next strike sends Dante skidding. Dust plumes upward in the wake of his heels, clings to the sticky perspiration darkening the front of his henley. Dante pants, and laughs.

“Gimme a break.” He sticks the Devil Sword Dante into the ashy dirt, watches Vergil prowl in an arc around him a length away. They’re both filthy and yet Vergil somehow retains his dignity—his feline, predatory grace. Dante’s throat closes up if he watches for too long, so his gaze flickers to Yamato instead, at last in her full glory wielded in Vergil’s graceful hands.

To his surprise, Vergil sheathes her. Dante tilts his head. 

“What’s this now? You givin’ in?” he says. “C’mon Verg—we were just getting started!”

He won’t admit to relief. Fuck, his arms ache. His entire body aches. Only the adrenaline of clashing (almost amicably?) with his twin (finally, after so long, no true hostility; no rampant bloodlust; no thunderous brontide of ruthless ambition that leaves nothing but paltry ashes in its wake) has kept him going for what feels like decades. His blood drums like its own beast through his veins, wild with delight. Wild with anxiety, wild with restlessness. 

The look Vergil sends his way is pinched and distasteful. “Merely indulging you, little brother.” But he looks tired too. Not even the Sons of Sparda can sustain themselves forevermore on the sole act of dueling. 

“Whatever you say,” says Dante, his Devil Sword vanishing in a burst of flame. He grins, and when Vergil scoffs and turns away, he tracks the way Vergil’s coattails flutter about his long legs, infuriatingly elegant. 

Vergil doesn’t look the same as Dante remembers. Which is to say: he doesn’t really look like Dante anymore, and that—that is _weird_. Sits strange in Dante’s bones. Visible proof that, though they still move in sync, effortlessly unified in the midst of battle, in truth Vergil has become a stranger. 

_Exhale._ The abrupt tightness in his chest recedes somewhat. 

When Vergil notices Dante hasn’t moved, he pauses. He glances over his shoulder and his eyes are cool as glass, but he’s waiting. So Dante follows; allows himself to fall to that age-old impulse, that instinct, reeling in that red string with every step. It’s frayed, but unbroken.

They walk in silence. What now? Dante wonders. Rest, he thinks. He does want a break, now that the excitement has faded and his breaths are slowing to a steady beat. He feels grimy, thoroughly tested against brick and mortar, drawn thin and strained.

“So, we touring the Underworld now, or something?”

“Hm,” says Vergil. 

Not quite an answer. “How about a sit-down, then,” says Dante, and casts his gaze around for something suitable. There, a jut in the earth, possibly a leftover dead root of the Qliphoth. He stalks over and sits his ass down.

A part of him doesn’t think Vergil will follow suit, but Vergil does, after another momentary pause. His steps toward Dante are careful and measured, his marble face unreadable, and then Vergil is standing over him, Yamato’s sheath loose and relaxed in his hand. There’s no sun in the Underworld for him to block, but Dante feels shadowed anyway. 

Dante pats the space beside him. Vergil folds himself down in a single graceful motion, looks only mildly disgruntled while doing so. Yamato is set neatly across his lap, its tip mere centimeters from Dante’s thigh.

More silence between them. Vergil followed him, Dante thinks. As Dante always follows Vergil. Maybe even for the first time, voluntarily; discounting Nero’s demand and Vergil’s lukewarm agreement atop the Qliphoth plateau. The realization settles him as much as it suddenly terrifies him. 

How long will this last? 

He hates looking inward, but he does it now, grabs the monstrous ache in his chest with human hands and tries to strangle it into submission. 

“Dante.”

Dante starts. Realizes he’s clutched his shirt over his heart. He can feel Vergil’s gaze on him, heavy and piercing.

Dante doesn’t want to think about this, much less talk about this, much less _talk with Vergil_. He’s never dealt well with uncertainty. Or. Well. Feelings in general. Runs in the fucking family, he’s sure. “No chance the Underworld’s discovered pizza in the past couple of years, right?” he says lightly. “I’m starving.” He isn’t.

Vergil’s eyes narrow. He says nothing.

His brother had never been particularly loquacious, but Dante doesn’t remember him ever being this quiet, either. Not even a jab? Dante fiddles with a seam in his glove. The unsettled fluttering in his stomach has slowly begun to melt into molten frustration. The lack of bristling hostility or battle joy leaves nothing but thick, stifling tension between them—at least, to Dante.

Either Vergil hasn’t noticed, or he doesn’t care.

Criticism, at least, is something Dante has never quailed from voicing. “What, no ‘ _Dante, you’re an idiot’_ or ‘ _Dante, demons don’t eat human food_ ’? Resurrection sure did a number on you.”

Vergil tilts his head in Dante’s direction.

“Now you’re being contrary on purpose,” says Dante.

“Perhaps.”

Dante can’t help it, the sudden compulsion to be obnoxious as all hell. “Vergilll.”

Vergil sighs. It’s slight, barely there; if Dante hadn’t been so keen on him, he wouldn’t have heard it. “I see the passage of time hasn’t lessened your childishness.”

“You’re one to talk,” says Dante. Abruptly, he feels self-conscious. He rubs his jaw and considers his rough, bristly stubble. He’s got more lines on his face than he did twenty-odd years ago, he knows. And Vergil… time has left its mark on Vergil, too, but differently. They had once run parallel, started from the same origin point—now irreconcilably diverged. A branch that bisected further and further as it drew closer to the sun.

To his credit, he hesitates for only a split second before he reaches forward.

And to Vergil’s credit, Vergil doesn’t immediately thrust Yamato through his brother’s heart when Dante’s fingers touch his jaw. He stills instead. Dante can feel the tension rippling through him, cold and iron-wrought. Suddenly the air is suffocating.

“What are you doing?” says Vergil, _sotto voce_ , like a rasp of fabric.

“Relax,” Dante mutters. “I’m not gonna stab you.” Probably can’t say the same for Vergil, but Dante will take what he can get for as long as he can get it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, either. He nudges Vergil’s chin, more of a suggestion than anything else; Vergil turns his head, though. Looks him fully in the face. His eyes are hooded, glittering, and the dark bags beneath them are more prominent than Dante’s have ever been. Dante considers the unfamiliar line of Vergil’s cheekbone and the more familiar grimace between Vergil’s eyebrows. 

The Vergil of old would have never allowed this. They’re close; close enough that Dante can feel every quiet pull of Vergil’s breath against his thumb. He’s leaned in during his inspection, unconsciously, and Vergil just… watches him. With a start, Dante realizes he doesn’t want to pull away. 

He does though, because _what the fuck_. His neck grows hot underneath the collar of his coat. 

Vergil’s hand shoots out and snatches him by the wrist before he can completely draw back. Then he looks surprised about it. Dante’s next breath locks in his throat, confusion roiling in his gut. Vergil hasn’t touched him except to stab him in decades.

They stay like that for a second, still and staring at each other. But then Dante’s senses prick, a warning, the cloying redolence of salt and blood coating his tongue, and Vergil’s, too, because Dante sees the way his eyes sharpen to a color clear as ice. 

The moment is broken. As one, they break away to plunge infernal steel into the snarling maws of the pouncing hellhounds. 

“So technically you’re the king of the Underworld now,” says Dante. “After that Fruit of Extreme Power, or whatever.”

Vergil has the gall to look faintly amused. He cuts down an empusa with a single effortless, efficient stroke. “Do you object?”

“Doesn’t matter either way, right?” Dante says, as his sword bursts through another demon’s chest with a splatter of scarlet viscera and crimson flame. “You’d think, being the almighty overlord, you wouldn’t be attacked by your own subjects.” He punctuates this with a swift decapitation of another hound. 

Vergil hums. “The Underworld does not follow the rules of human society, Dante.”

“Or any rules at all, I bet.”

The last demonic growl fades into a pained gurgle. Immediately, the brothers whirl on each other, their blades ringing once more across the clearing, spitting showers of silvery sparks between their grimy faces. Dante pushes and his muscles scream in protest. He hasn’t slept in however long it’s been since they leapt off the summit of the Qliphoth, but it’s no excuse—not when Dante knows Vergil hasn’t, either. No way in hell (ha) will Dante be the first to cave.

Vergil doesn’t quite stagger, but Dante feels that split second falter of strength. His blade comes down and the force of it against Yamato sends Vergil to a knee.

Neither disengages. Dante grins toothily. “I thought that fruit was supposed to give you power,” he drawls. Forces himself forward and Vergil’s feet slide back, just a centimeter. “But look at this; I’m still one up.”

Vergil’s upper lip curls. “You lost count twenty bouts ago.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you don’t wanna admit you’re losing.”

Vergil’s energy spikes; Dante feels it resonate deep in his core, arctic and sharp. He shivers involuntarily, his own blood stirring and rumbling in answer. Then Vergil scoffs and the chilling presence dissipates like mist, leaves Dante off guard for the split second it takes for Vergil to knock him aside with a flare of azure power.

Dante stops just short of tripping over the bumpy, bloodstained earth, hand tightening around the hilt of his Devil Sword as he fights to right his suddenly spinning vision. Shit, he really is tired if it’s fucking up his motor skills.

Vergil doesn’t press his advantage. Again. At this rate he’s gonna start feeling spoiled, Dante thinks dizzily, as he stabs his sword into the ground and leans heavily upon it.

A light touch to his forearm. Instinct kicks in and Dante almost lashes out—stops himself just in time.

“Dante,” says Vergil. He has a peculiar way of saying Dante’s name: solemn, weighted with intent. Dante never realized how much he wanted to hear it again until Vergil came back. “You’re tired.”

“No shit,” says Dante in his most cavalier voice, in a valiant attempt to distract himself from his racing heart. His awareness of Vergil’s proximity pounds fiercely against his senses, a salve and a bruise all at once. “You’re tired too, Verg, don’t deny it.”

Vergil chooses not to respond. He still hasn’t removed his hand from Dante’s forearm, and his bare fingertips are searing into Dante’s skin. It’s gentle. That’s worse.

“This way,” says Vergil. Dante tramples his instant spike of panic when Vergil finally pulls away, disguising it with the withdrawal of his sword and a little shake of his head. Then he freezes. Yamato is still in his brother’s hand, her elegant blade glistening like water. Vergil raises her and slices once, twice; a bright, haloed _X_ splits open into a deep black abyss before him.

Dante doesn’t think. He lurches forward and catches Vergil just as he’s sheathing Yamato, just before he steps through ( _steps through to leave Dante behind,_ again)—and their momentum hurls them straight into the portal and through to the other side.

They land in a tangled heap in the dust beneath the shadow of a low, rocky overhang, and the portal closes with a dull thud behind them. 

Vergil shoves Dante off him with a snarl and the unmistakable silvery ring of Yamato sliding out of her sheath. Dante’s entire body feels like lead; he lands sprawled on his back and doesn’t flinch even when Vergil drives the Yamato into the earth a hairsbreadth from Dante’s throat. Dante doesn’t care.

Dante made it.

“What was that?” Vergil hisses.

Dante drags an arm over his eyes. _Reflex_ , says his brain. _Desperation_ , whispers his heart. “Wasn’t gonna let you get away this time,” says his mouth.

There’s a pause. Dante lets his arm fall so he can look Vergil in the face. Vergil looms over him, both hands folded over Yamato’s hilt, his face shadowed against the ashy sky and his eyes glimmering.

“I was going to have you follow,” he says.

Dante resists the urge to hide his eyes again. He clenches his jaw but the words spill out of him, acrid and sour on his tongue. “Don’t screw with me. You’ve never let me follow.”

Not before Temen-ni-gru. Not after, either, when the river sloshed against their boots and the void of the Underworld gaped beneath them, when Dante lunged forward with a hand outstretched into the unforgiving bite of Yamato—that one nip just enough to stop Dante short, to have him _hesitate,_ one, two, three seconds too long.

Surprise flashes across Vergil’s features, there and gone again so quickly Dante could have imagined it. 

“You followed me this time,” Vergil says. “To the Underworld.”

Hell, Dante even dove in first. He’d been half afraid Vergil would have just left him to it. “So what? Doesn’t make up for the last time.”

Vergil’s eyebrows come together. “You prefer the human world.”

“Yeah, and?” Dante laughs bitterly. “You took the choice out of my hands.”

“You made that choice,” says Vergil. “When you said you would kill me to stop me.”

“As if you weren’t doing the same.”

“I wasn’t.” 

Dante stops. Distantly, he notices his fingers are furrowed into the ground, so harshly they twinge with pain.

“I would have chosen you,” he says, finally. Chokes out: ”I should have chosen you. Damn the consequences.”

Vergil bows his head. “No. It was for the best.”

“To become Mundus’ slave?” snarls Dante. “To have your blood on my hands?” 

“To keep you alive. To have you safe.” Vergil takes in Dante’s shocked silence. “It was my folly, Dante. Not yours.”

“Admitting to a mistake.” Dante’s grin is automatic, defensive, full of teeth. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

He sees his error too late. Vergil’s expression goes blank; Dante hadn’t realized it was open to begin with. He scrambles, rakes his brain for the right words to reach his twin again. Nothing comes, two decades of separation a yawning void between them.

Vergil rises and draws Yamato from the dirt, flicks her clean and sheathes her again.

“Sleep,” he says into the overwrought silence, turning away.

Oh, _fuck_ this. “No.” Dante struggles to sit up. “I told you someone needs to keep an eye on you.”

Vergil scoffs. “In your state?”

“Yes, _in my state_. Who do you think you’re fooling?” Dante bites out. They stare at each other, stony and tense. Then Dante heaves a massive sigh. “We both look and feel like roadkill. Just sit down, Verg.”

Vergil’s grip on Yamato’s scabbard tightens, briefly. Dante eyes it, focused and alert. If Vergil doesn’t think Dante will jump him again at the first sign of a portal opening, then he’s got another thing coming. Slowly, though, Vergil sits down. Again.

_The Vergil whisperer_ , Dante thinks wryly. _Only capable of making Vergil sit._

Not capable of making him stay.

He takes a deep breath, shoves aside his kneejerk reaction to make another blasé remark. This is for Nero’s sake, he wants to claim, but he knows viscerally in the cracked and scored mirror of his soul that it’s really for his own. If Dante isn’t cautious, the weak spark of hope he’s been cradling since their jump from the Qliphoth will explode outward.

He wants too much. He’s too human—he can’t help it. 

He can feel Vergil’s gaze on him again even as he struggles to put his convoluted, roiling emotions into words; tries to rack up the courage, even, to speak them aloud. And maybe that’s his biggest problem: the very real possibility that if Dante speaks his heart, Vergil will ruthlessly cut him down the same way he always has. And then what?

Dante will stay with him, of course, because Vergil is his twin and they’ve been apart for far longer than they’ve been together and Dante still feels it, feels that gaping hole where his other half should be with a viscous, throbbing ache. He never wants to let Vergil out of his sight again. But with Yamato… Vergil has ever been apt at going where Dante can’t follow.

Silence, again, the bleak landscape so still.

When they were little, Dante didn’t mind that Vergil didn’t talk much; he filled the gaps himself with what their mother once fondly described as rambunctious enthusiasm. He could always rile Vergil up easy, anyway, and then Vergil would talk, and they would argue, and then tussle in the mud like the half-feral children they really were. They would shout and wrestle and stamp each other with yellow-blue bruises that faded rapidly, long before they began impaling each other in earnest.

Vergil is still easy to rile, at least. Even if tackling Dante to the grass has become an impersonal, lightning-quick flash of his sword.

It’s too quiet.

Dante’s head snaps up. Vergil is still next to him, cross-legged, but his chin has fallen against his chest and his eyes are closed. His shoulders rise and fall with deep and measured breaths. Dante sags back, scoffs to hide his relief, though there are no witnesses. Then he swallows, because Vergil is asleep, asleep next to him, despite it all, despite everything for which Dante still can’t forgive himself.

The fatigue probably won over. It’s dragging him down, too. He was in an alcoholic stupor the last time he was this tired, had gone through five bottles of whisky at his desk and stared at the dirty ceiling until the darkness superseded his swimming vision.

This time, Dante watches Vergil until it takes him under.

He wakes up on his back to the scent of leather, blood, steel. When he opens his eyes, Vergil is looking down at him, closer than Dante expected, his face unreadable. His head is cushioned on Vergil’s thigh and Vergil’s gloved hand rests upon Dante’s forehead, keeping Dante’s hair out of his face.

“You fell asleep first,” says Dante, for lack of anything better to say.

“Yes.” Vergil combs his fingers through Dante’s hair one more time—as if this casual contact is normal—unmoved by Dante’s scrutiny. Dante snatches his hand before Vergil can drop it, yanking it over his eyes, which to his shame have started to sting.

“Brother,” says Vergil, when Dante doesn’t let go.

“I missed you, alright?” Saying it out loud feels like he’s yanking out a chunk of his heart. It’s agonizing and liberating all at once. “Asshole.”

Vergil stops trying to pull his hand away. He’s quiet as Dante’s shoulders begin to shake, as Dante’s tears soak into his glove. The tide is enormous, all-encompassing; Dante tries to trap it behind his teeth, but when the first sob leaks through the dam crumbles entirely. 

Vergil doesn’t flinch, even when Dante’s fingers dig mercilessly into his wrist. His gentleness is almost cruel. It’s all Dante has ever wanted, all he has ever dreamed of, and all he has ever feared.

“I missed you too,” says Vergil, so very, very softly.

***

Vergil is not sorry.

He is not sorry for the people he has ruined, the lives he has snuffed out, the destruction his goals have wrought. He’s not sorry.

Vergil wakes and immediately looks for Dante, between one breath and the next.

His brother sits beside him, hunched and tense. He sleeps like he is in pain, his features contorted, his brow pinched together, the stark, worn lines on his face casting deep, unfamiliar shadows.

Vergil cannot stop himself from watching him. So much of Vergil’s memories—his life—has been lost to the void. But Vergil still remembers this, clear as glass: his brother, eight years old, chubby-cheeked and earnest, crawling under Vergil’s covers even though Vergil had demanded for separate beds. Eight-year-old Vergil grudgingly allowing Dante to embrace him because he wasn’t able to admit that he was lonely, too.

They are not children anymore. Vergil has not touched Dante kindly, much less slept beside him, in over three decades. He hardly understands it, this bereft echo in his chest when Dante looks at him with taciturn eyes. It doesn’t suit the Dante of Vergil’s memory. It unsettles him that it suits the Dante of now.

He turns his attention to the bleak landscape, recalls this particular part of the topography from when his hard-won body had been withering to ash. The Underworld’s denizens have not bothered them in some time. Vergil doesn’t doubt he and Dante have cut a significant swath through them in this area.

Dante shifts in his sleep. Like the polarized end of a magnet, Vergil’s gaze is drawn back to him.

He looks uncomfortable. Vergil hesitates. Then he reaches forth and slowly guides Dante down, so that his little brother’s head rests in his lap.

Vergil is not sorry for the lives he has destroyed.

But he wishes Dante’s had not been one of them.


	2. all i need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to change the rating lol
> 
> oneshots are in no particular order; this one occurs months after apogee. 
> 
> i do actually have some real ideas for this collection, but for now: haha smut byeee

Dante plops onto the couch next to Vergil, damp from the shower, his old, faded cotton jersey sticking to his collarbones while droplets roll down his neck from the ends of his hair. Vergil gives a faint grunt of distaste when Dante nuzzles into his shoulder, leaving a wet patch in Vergil’s dark, fitted sweater.

“Did you not dry off?”

“It’ll air dry,” says Dante, peering up at him through the dripping mop on his head. Then he grins slyly and pushes himself up to rub his nose under Vergil’s ear. “Pay attention to me, brother.”

Vergil shoves him off, eyes still on his book. “Don’t I pay attention to you enough?”

“Yeah, well, I’m greedy.” Dante isn’t deterred. A single broad hand lands on Vergil’s thigh, and squeezes. “I want more, Vergillll. Indulge me.”

“Your insatiability is unbecoming,” says Vergil. He flips a page.

The insult rolls of Dante like oil on water. The truth is, he adores this, regardless: the low hum of the ceiling fan, the crinkle of old paper with each turned page, the soft tread of footsteps downstairs while he’s upstairs, the sight of Vergil’s coat folded neatly over the back of the sofa. This is the now of Devil May Cry, the vision he’s always wanted but never thought he would truly have.

“So cold, as always,” says Dante, but he’s still grinning. He wriggles underneath Vergil’s arm and uses his head to commandeer his brother’s lap, and Vergil is forced to twist the book aside if he doesn’t want Dante’s wet hair all over it.

“Dante,” Vergil growls, but his arm naturally falls over Dante’s chest, so Dante considers himself forgiven.

He lets himself be content with this for awhile, closing his eyes to the yellow glow of the ceiling lamp, lulled by the warmth Vergil exudes and the subtle cadence of Vergil’s breathing. He falls asleep, maybe, sometime in between, but gradually stirs back into awareness to the feel of Vergil’s hand rubbing slow circles over Dante’s breastbone.

Dante traps the hand between his own and brings it up to lay a kiss on the bare palm. He trails his lips over Vergil’s lifeline, then his loveline; Vergil’s fingers curl slightly under the attention.

He opens his eyes. Vergil gazes down at him. His book lays shut on the coffee table before them.

Dante reaches up, curling his hand around Vergil’s nape and bringing him the rest of the way down. Vergil comes without resistance.

“Got time for me now?” says Dante cheekily, when they pull apart. 

“Hm. I’m sure I can find something better to do.”

Dante laughs. “You’re such a bastard.”

He shifts around and rises to his knees, caging Vergil against the corner of the couch with a hand braced against the arm. Vergil remains unmoved, but accepts his next kiss, too, their mouths sliding together slick and wet, and Dante curves his free hand under Vergil’s jaw, thumb caressing the soft skin below Vergil’s ear.

Slowly, Vergil’s hands rise from his sides. He spreads them overtop Dante’s shoulders, and squeezes, sharp, before roaming up the column of his neck and into Dante’s hair, gripping tightly. Dante grunts into the kiss as Vergil rakes his fingers ruthlessly through the tangles that have amassed after his shower.

“Easy; else I’ll go bald,” he says.

“It’ll be a better look on you, I’m sure.” Vergil nips Dante’s bottom lip; Dante hisses when Vergil’s canine pierces delicate flesh, and he pulls away to Vergil’s self-satisfied expression. It’s like kissing a fussy cat, fuck.

Vergil is the one who leans back in first, though, licking at the already healing wound before plundering Dante’s mouth again, and Dante purrs as Vergil’s blunt nails scratch over Dante’s soft shirt, hiking up the hem to reach the skin beneath. Dante returns the favor, tugging insistently at Vergil’s sweater until they break apart long enough for him to pull it over Vergil’s head. Then Dante yanks his own shirt off, too, in a fluid, practiced motion.

He will never get enough of Vergil’s skin, Dante thinks, as he spreads his hands across Vergil’s chest, brushing his nipples, caressing his ribs. He doesn’t see enough of it even on a good day; Vergil has always insisted on being covered throat to toe, even though his vest would bare the lean muscles of his arms if he’d just shed his overcoat more often. 

Vergil seems content to let Dante take the lead, this time, which is treat enough that it directs Dante’s blood straight south. His brother reclines against the arm of the couch, and when Dante doesn’t follow immediately, raises his eyebrows, _any day now_ clear as glass across his placid, sharply handsome features.

“Just lookin’,” says Dante, by way of explanation, and Vergil rolls his eyes.

“A sight you’ve seen countless times by now, brother.”

“Yeah? Well, it never gets old.” Dante is gratified to see Vergil’s face flash with surprise, there and gone in a split second, and even more so when he sees the top of Vergil’s ears flush. “Oh, I see you liked that,” he says, grin splitting his face as he crawls up the length of Vergil’s body, and Vergil scowls and shoves a hand into his nose.

Dante nuzzles it and kisses it again before grasping his wrist and laying it aside. “C’mon,” he coos, “admit it. You’re charmed. Even you can be charmed by your suave little brother.”

Vergil’s knee shoots up, right between Dante’s legs; aborts just as Dante flinches back, and Vergil smirks. “Oh?” he drawls. “Say that again.”

“Alright, alright,” Dante concedes. “You’re stone-cold, totally immovable, impenetrable and invulnerable, and you like absolutely nothing, ever.”

“Better,” says Vergil. “Come here.”

Dante does. Vergil slides his arms around his neck and Dante bows to press another kiss to his lips, then along the fine line of his jaw. His teeth graze Vergil’s throat, followed by a soothing stripe of tongue, and he feels Vergil tense, marginally, beneath him, his breath quickening quiet and controlled, until Dante moves on to suck at the junction between his neck and shoulder.

He continues trailing down, down, between Vergil’s pale pectorals, flushed pink in the golden light, following the shadowed dips and valleys of his strong abdomen. Vergil sighs and tips his knees apart to accommodate him when he reaches the top of Vergil’s slacks. A clearly defined bulge awaits him; Dante’s mouth waters as hurries to unbuckle Vergil’s belt.

He kinda regrets not moving them to the bed—the couch is a bit cramped, given both of their heights and Vergil’s mile-long legs—but Dante doesn’t think even Mundus could peel him off Vergil now, with the sharp redolence of Vergil’s arousal buzzing through his skull as he fumbles open Vergil’s fly and pulls out his cock.

“Dante,” says Vergil again, a barely-there exhale, lacking its usual edge and imbued with twice its usual intimacy. “ _Yes_ ,” he hisses, when Dante swallows him down.

Dante takes his time. He laps his tongue back up the whole length, following the fat ridge running up the underside; suckles at the tip and teases the slit, relishing the saltiness heavy on his tongue, before taking Vergil in again, chasing his fist to make up the difference. He watches Vergil through his lashes and smiles around the cock in his mouth at the languid way Vergil stares down at him—belying his quick, terse breaths, the way his hand has fisted itself, white-knuckled, into the upholstery. His hips twitch under Dante’s iron grip.

Dante releases him with an obscene _pop_. “Enjoying the view?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” says Vergil.

“So stingy, as usual.” Dante drags down the foreskin with his thumb; kisses the tip, and his grin stretches cheshire-like and devil-may-care when Vergil gives an audible inhale. “I’ll make you admit it,” he murmurs, before pulling Vergil’s trousers down the whole way. Vergil helps with only a cursory upward tilt of his pelvis, and nothing more. The slacks drop in a heap on the rug.

 _Princess_ , thinks Dante, fondly. He strokes Vergil once, twice, then wraps his lips back around him, and this time Vergil’s fingers burrow back into his hair to guide him. But Dante knows what he likes. He opens his mouth wide and lets Vergil fuck into him, until Vergil spills with a soft hiss into Dante’s throat. 

Dante swallows; he always does. Pulls off Vergil’s soft, glistening cock when Vergil kicks at him, and licks the bitterness from the corners of his lips with a hum of smug satisfaction.

Vergil’s hands tug at his hair again. His mouth is slack but his eyes glow bright and blue around black, bottomless pupils. “More,” he says.

“Ow, ow, the hair,” says Dante, but obliges to be yanked back up for another kiss, all teeth and tongue and salty bitterness shared between them. Vergil’s fingers clasp Dante’s nape and his voice resonates in three extra layers nonexistent to a human’s vocal chords: “ _More_.”

Dante’s chest stirs in answer, molten heat in his belly and smoke in his lungs. Even trapped in Vergil’s embrace, he still has just enough leverage to wet his fingers with saliva and reach down, scraping his nail lightly across Vergil’s perineum (and Vergil makes another quiet sound, bitten back and muffled) before circling Vergil’s hole.

Dante rubs his stubble against Vergil’s cheek and Vergil snaps his teeth at him—then cuts himself short with a low, heady groan when Dante sinks his fingers in, two at once. Vergil’s body sucks him in, still loose from this morning, blazing hot and tight and welcoming in every opposition to his brother’s arctic eyes and jagged heart. Dante presses open-mouthed kisses to Vergil’s neck, forever fascinated by the fluttery pulse just beneath his papery skin, and savors the sting of Vergil’s nails burying themselves into his shoulderblades.

“C’mon, Vergil,” he breathes in a mantra, as Vergil gradually relaxes around him. “Just a little more, yeah?”

Vergil’s nails bite deliberately into his skin, this time. “I don’t need your coddling.”

“Mmhm,” says Dante, as he works his fingers in further, and feels all the hair on his body stand upright when Vergil drives back against his hand, the scantest of moans wisping into the space between them. _Right there._

He has to pull out and pull back to shove down his sweats, cool air a shock to his overheated skin, and Vergil makes a noise so disgruntled that Dante doesn’t even bother yanking them off entirely, leaves them hanging halfway down his thighs as he wets his palm with more spit and jerks himself with brutal efficiency. Then he’s immediately curling back around Vergil, mouthing his neck, one hand still on his cock to drag it up and down till its head catches on Vergil’s rim.

“Let me,” he says, and Vergil grips him tight and closes his eyes and says: “ _Yes_.” And Dante sinks in, inch by agonizing inch, to the hitch of his brother’s breaths against his temple and his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.

So many times they’ve done this, and Dante has yet to tire of it: Vergil’s quiet noises of approval, restrained and truncated as if he can’t bear to let Dante hear—the searing drag of his cock sliding home, snug and cradled within Vergil’s powerful body—Vergil saying, over and over: “ _Dante_.”

He could do this forever, he thinks, as Vergil crushes their mouths together again, teeth clacking and tongues intertwined. Dante pants against him and the groan that rips out of him is nearly feral when Vergil grinds his hips down, _down_ , always seeking more, his greedy older brother.

But Dante is just as greedy. He yanks Vergil closer by the waist and Vergil slips down against the arm of the couch till only his head is pillowed against it, his entire lower half in the air, legs open, and Dante grasps the underside of his knees in both hands as his spine bows in. He rocks out, slowly, then back in, savoring that delicious, just-shy of too-dry friction—until Vergil snarls at him and buries his long fingers into Dante’s neck and then Dante’s thrusting, grinding deep and relentless into that tight, burning heat, lava-slick pleasure blazing white-hot behind his eyelids and boiling in his veins. 

“So fucking good for me,” he gasps, as Vergil’s back arches violently beneath him. He’s half-hard again, cock rubbing wetly against Dante’s stomach, and Dante presses closer, leans in closer, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, never, ever close enough. “Vergil. _Vergil_.”

“Dante,” Vergil rasps, one more time, head tilting back, baring his throat, and shudders against him when Dante tenderly kisses his pulse point. Dante reaches for the cock trapped between them and fists the flushed, oversensitive skin, massaging his thumb to spread the drool of precome over the dewy head. He swivels his hips just so—grazes against Vergil’s sweet spot over and over, and revels in the way Vergil snarls and quivers and seizes in the cradle of Dante’s elbow.

Vergil comes first, again, with a hitched breath and a groan a register lower than usual, a demonic reverberation in his voice that tingles at the base of Dante’s own throat. His brother’s eyes squeeze shut and Dante anoints breathless kiss after breathless kiss to the delicate silk of his eyelids, palm cupped over his cock to fruitlessly catch the dribble of come. He fucks Vergil through his quiet orgasm, chokes out a husky, low moan himself when Vergil squeezes, hard, around him.

“Two for Dante,” he manages, then laughs when Vergil growls and headbutts him, though not quite as forcefully as he could have—his whole body lax and languorous in his post-coital haze.

“Hurry up,” says Vergil, like the prick he is, and Dante pants out “yeah, yeah”, the rhythm of his hips increasingly erratic as he chases his own pleasure. And then Vergil slides his hands around Dante’s jaw, pulls him impossibly closer, whispers something soft and hoarse and secret in Dante’s ear and Dante—Dante comes undone.

One thrust, two, before he spills deep inside, as deep as he can go, as close as they’ll ever come to one entity; one perfect, sovereign soul. Vergil rakes his fingers through Dante’s hair again and again, humming as Dante gasps and trembles in the electric incandescence that subsumes him.

He descends from his high to the warmth of Vergil’s skin against his own, damp again and slick with sweat, Vergil brushing silvery locks of hair from Dante’s eyes. There’s a flicker of tenderness in his half-lidded gaze, something rare and priceless that Dante hoards jealously within the deepest recesses of his heart. 

Dante buries his face against Vergil’s neck. Vergil allows it, allows Dante to stay inside him for a minute longer, luxuriating in their intimacy together, even though it’s cramped and hot and sticky now that the adrenaline has dissolved away. Then he says: “You need another shower.”

Dante grunts. “What’s the rush?”

“It’s disgusting.”

“You didn’t think it was disgusting a minute ago,” says Dante, and Vergil levels him with a frosty look that only serves to make Dante smile. “If I pull out of you, we might stain the couch.”

Vergil grimaces. “Then I suggest you do it quick.”

It’s the only warning Dante gets before Vergil’s fingers dig mercilessly into Dante’s ribs, and Dante yelps out an _alright, alright!_ before he slides out, carefully, and blurs into the nearest bathroom for a towel, adjusting his sweats back up his ass as he goes. Vergil is still in the same position when he returns, reclined with one foot on the couch and the other grazing the rug below.

He wipes the come already beginning to drip from Vergil’s pink and puffy hole, then the smear of it across Vergil’s stomach and the soft cock draped over Vergil’s thigh, before tossing the towel carelessly away even though Vergil snaps out: _Dante_. Just so he can collapse unceremoniously across his brother’s supine body again.

“You’re cleaning that up,” says Vergil.

“Yes, yes.” Dante kisses him, and takes it as a victory when Vergil doesn’t bite him back. “Give me a minute, I’m feeling soupy.”

 _Soupy?_ he sees Vergil mouth, but Vergil only sighs as Dante wraps his arms around him and tangles their legs together. His brother reaches for his book on the coffee table, apparently resigned to letting Dante cuddle him relentlessly for the time being, even though they both know Vergil could throw him off easily if he was actually so inclined.

They’ll have to get off this couch eventually; it really is cramped as all hell. But Dante’s content for now, curled around his compliant twin, clinging just a bit longer to that sense of closeness.


End file.
